


(the first time ever) i saw your face

by percivaljackson



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Amnesia, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Lovers to Idiot Amnesiac to Friends to Lovers, Pining, Sharing a Bed, but it would be kind of dishonest so take that as u will, i could add established relationship and it wouldnt be LYING, please excuse me as i cram every trope into this, vaguely inspired by the mandalorian, what do you mean that’s not a tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29472348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/percivaljackson/pseuds/percivaljackson
Summary: “Hey, what should I call you?”The Mandalorian turns back to look out the window. The streaking stars are reflected in the shiny black of her visor, and PR-3981 finds himself incapable of tearing his eyes from the sight of it. “Most people call me Mando,” she finally says.“That’s not your name.”“No,” she agrees. “It’s not.”akaamnesia au but make it star wars.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 18
Kudos: 35





	(the first time ever) i saw your face

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to wip 2 electric boogaloo. ive been working on this for approximately ten billion years and am very glad to share the first part of it with u! if im being honest this was just me leaning as hard as i could into percys 'what the absolute fuck is going on' aesthetic.
> 
> for my star wars freakz out there, timeline wise this happens a few years after the film that shall not be named (ep ix), although i mention almost nothing to do w that trilogy except that the first order brainwashes their stormtroopers. i have no idea how much of this makes sense without some star wars knowledge, but i dont think it should be all too confusing. 
> 
> also yes im making the romans in general baddies in this but thats mostly so i can shit on hera and make her the Big Bad. nasty cow! no other roman characters are eviled

_The first time ever I saw your face_

_I thought the sun rose in your eyes_

_And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave_

_To the dark and the endless skies, my love_

//

_[VICTORY II-_ CLASS STAR DESTROYER _JUNO_ : HOLDING BLOCK 3H884 AUDIO LOG #83703 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

[LOADING…]

GEN. SOSPITA: I’ll admit, Mr. Jackson, none of us expected you to resist the conditioning for this long. Bravo.

PRISONER NJ9334: [unintelligible] ...kriffin’ _shabuir_ ass motherf— [scream]

GEN. SOSPITA: I’m afraid that kind of language will still not be tolerated here.

PRISONER NJ9334: You shock me with that thing one more time…

GEN. SOSPITA: My pleasure.

PRISONER NJ9334: _Fuck._ [unintelligable] Fuck you. [scream]

GEN. SOSPITA: We’ll keep going as long as we need to, Mr. Jackson. Our procedure has a one hundred percent success rate.

PRISONER NJ9334: Your procedure’s never procedured me before. Bitch. [scream]

GEN. SOSPITA: You seem to think that the longer you resist, the less likely it is to work. Let me assure you that you are _wrong,_ Mr. Jackson. The amount of synapses that fired this morning at the mention of—

PRISONER NJ9334: Don’t you dare say her name.

GEN. SOSPITA: Annabeth isn’t going to rescue you, Mr. Jackson. I’m the only person in the galaxy who knows where you are. If I were you, I’d give up.

_[VICTORY II-_ CLASS STAR DESTROYER _JUNO_ : HOLDING BLOCK 3H884 AUDIO LOG #83703 END TRANSCRIPT]

//

PR-3981’s bunk is spotless.

The bed is made, sheets tucked neatly in to form tight corners. The locker to the side hangs three identical uniforms of black under armor. The white plasticore armor he wears is the only one he is allotted. A pair of boots identical to the ones on his feet are pushed just under the bed.

PR-3981, stationed stormtrooper of _Pelta_ -class frigate _Thundercloud_ stands in front of his mirror, attempting to get his hair to lie flat. The helmet goes over it anyway, but he always tries. Water only makes the problem worse, and in the end he gives up. 

He shoves his helmet back over his head. His uniform is immaculate from head to heel. 

He does not remember how he got here.

Long deployments in deep space are monotonous—everyone knows that. What he doesn’t know is why it makes him feel like his brain is coming apart at the seams. He remembers his daily life on board, and isn’t that what his life is, after all?

What else is there but this?

He has been a stormtrooper for as long as he can remember. That’s how being a stormtrooper works; they’ve all been stormtroopers for their entire lives. There is nothing to remember before he was a stormtrooper, because PR-3981 has always _been_ a stormtrooper.

He has been a stormtrooper for as long as he can remember.

Try as he might, he can only remember the last eight months.

PR-3981 doesn’t feel well. To be honest, he’s belt like absolute shit since the start of his last shift, nine hours ago. Every second he stares at himself in the mirror he feels worse, like he’s submerged and drowning in a thick, warm liquid, unable to escape. He takes a halting step back, tears his eyes away from his reflection, and then scrambles to the door. It slides open easily, but that’s no comfort. He still thinks he might hurl.

A squadron of troopers marches past, silent save for the rhythmic steps of their boots. PR-3981 stands at attention until they pass and then collapses back into the wall for support. He’s not scheduled to be on duty again for another six hours—that’s plenty of time to get some kind of painkiller and sleep for a bit. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he stumbles down the hallway, towards the medbay. The reflective black surface of the floor swims in his vision, but he breathes through the disorientation and focuses on putting one foot in front of another. 

He staggers his way through the medbay entrance, eventually. The med-droid turns on its wheel and approaches him where he leans against the doorway. “Data-chip, please,” it chirps at him.

He holds out his vambrace and the droid scans his code. “PR-3981,” it says. “Please wait while a medic is notified of your arrival.”

There’s only one or two medics on duty at a time on a ship this size, but PR-3981 doesn’t care; he’ll wait as long as he needs to. He makes his way to one of the three empty cots and sits down heavily, sucking in deep breaths. His head is pounding with every heartbeat. Even through his visor the lights are too bright, so he closes them and tries to get his muscles to relax, one by one, unaware of how much time is passing; he just focuses on his next breath. There’s a flash of something—a memory? Something golden, something silver. He can’t quite get it to form into something _solid_. 

“PR-3981,” a voice says.

He blinks his eyes open. A medic is in front of him, holding a folder. 

“Sir,” PR-3981 mumbles, his tongue heavy. 

“What’s the issue, PR-3981?”

“I don’t—” he flounders, trying to get his eyes to focus on the face of the medic, “I don’t know. I don’t feel well. Everything is...blurry. I can’t think straight.”

The medic sighs, looking down at the folder. “It’s only been two kriffing weeks this time,” he mumbles.

He hasn’t been addressed, so PR-3981 doesn’t say anything. 

“Okay, PR-3981,” the medic declares. “I’m gonna give you the good stuff and we’ll see if you can’t just sleep this one off. Remove your helmet.” 

PR-3981 removes his helmet and sets it on the cot beside him, wincing at the stabbing pain that comes with the brightness of the lights. The medic reaches for a syringe on the rolling cart beside him, and that’s when everything goes dark.

PR-3981 blinks hard. It’s still dark. His heartbeat speeds up. “Sir, I—” he gulps. “I can’t see.”

“That’s because the lights went out, PR-3981,” the medic says, annoyed. “Now shut up.”

There’s a tense few seconds of silence before the emergency lights flicker on, illuminating the medbay in harsh, red light. It’s easier on PR-3981’s eyes, at least. He blinks them into enough focus to see the powered down med-droid in the corner, arms held out mid-task.

The medic curses loudly. “That was an EMP, not a power outage” he realizes. “Stay here, trooper.”

“Yes, sir,” PR-3981 says, but the medic is already gone, his folder abandoned and open on the cot by PR-3981’s thigh. 

He looks down at it, curious. The top of the page reads _PR-3981_ and below it is a detailed list of his past assessments and the assignments where they happened. The top is his most recent: _Thundercloud._ Two weeks ago it says that he was treated for a minor illness. He frowns and tries to remember that—there’s a blurry kind of memory, he thinks. Maybe. A month and a half ago shows that he was treated for a minor illness on _Gladiator_ -class Star Destroyer _Sancus._ A month and a half before that, he was treated for a minor illness on _Praetor_ -class Star Battlecruiser _Viduus._ He runs his finger down the list, squinting to read the print in the red lighting. After flipping a few pages, he hits eight months ago. His lungs come to a stop when he sees it.

_Victory II-_ class Star Destroyer _Juno:_ ‘Submitted for reconditioning.’

A blaster fires in the hall outside, followed by the sound of a scuffle. PR-3981 snaps his head up just in time to see the door slide open.

A Mandalorian stands in the doorway, a blaster in one hand. The distinctive t-shaped visor locks on his form immediately.

PR-3981 reaches for his hip, but just hits the plasticore of his armor. _Shit._ He wasn’t reporting for duty, so he left his blaster in his quarters. _Idiot,_ he thinks. _Kriffing idiot._ He isn’t even wearing his helmet. A quick glance towards the tray of medical supplies tells him there’s nothing that will be helpful in a fight. He shifts his eyes back to the figure in the doorway, careful to stay as still as possible. His vision seems to sharpen on the Mandalorian’s figure, like a shaky frequency finally being dialed in right. 

She’s all matte gray armor, save for the shiny silver of her helmet and the orange marking on her right pauldron. Her stillness matches his own. While her blaster isn’t pointed at him, her finger stays on the trigger.

“I—I don’t want any trouble,” PR-3981 manages to get out, his mouth dry. Trouble, it seems, always finds him. 

_Submitted for reconditioning,_ his mind whispers. 

“Do you know who I am,” the Mandalorian says. It’s not a question—a threat, maybe? Her voice sounds strange through the helmet, tinny and hollow, so PR-3981 can’t be sure.

It doesn’t _sound_ like a question, but he shakes his head anyway, just to be safe. He’s never met a Mandalorian before; he wasn’t even sure they still existed. 

Without looking behind herself, the Mandalorian raises her blaster and shoots a stormtrooper that runs past the still open doorway. The plasticore armor cracks into pieces when the trooper hits the floor of the hallway, and then there’s silence again. “Who are you?” she asks.

“I’m a stormtrooper.” It feels like a lie. _Submitted for reconditioning._

The Mandalorian takes a slow step towards him. Her blaster stays drawn, but held in a sul position, her shoulders relaxed. “What’s your name?”

“PR-3981,” he says.

“That’s not a name,” the Mandalorian replies.

“It’s my name.”

“No,” she insists. “It’s not.” She takes another cautious step.

_Submitted for reconditioning._

PR-3981 takes a shuddering breath in. He can see just the boots of the trooper the Mandalorian shot from his position on the cot. 

_Submitted for reconditioning._

“Can you get me out of here?” he asks. 

The Mandalorian’s slow approach stops. “You want to leave?”

“I think I…” He reaches up and rubs his eyes so hard a supernova explodes against black. “I think I’ve tried to leave before. I think I’m not supposed to be here.”

“You think.”

It’s no surprise that the Mandalorian is hard to read. PR-3981 has no idea what could be going on inside that silver bucket. “It just all feels _wrong,_ somehow,” he tries to explain. “Like there’s an alarm going off that only I can hear, and it’s telling me to _run.”_ The Mandalorian shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “I can pay you,” PR-3981 is quick to mention. “I don’t have many credits, but I’ll work for you. I can help on jobs, if you’re in the Guild. I’m good in a fight.”

“Do me a favor,” the Mandalorian says, “and stop talking.”

PR-3981 gulps. 

The t-shaped visor tilts. “Someone’s coming,” she says. “Put your helmet on and follow me.”

PR-3981 does as he’s told. After the tiniest hesitation, he grabs the papers from the folder on the cot and shoves them under the breastplate of his armor. He can hear the approaching footsteps once he’s in the hallway, and after glancing to make sure that the Mandalorian is covering him, PR-3981 reaches down and takes the blaster from the dead stormtrooper. He doesn’t recognize them. It’s a relief. 

“Stick tight to me,” the Mandalorian tells him. The HUD of his helmet tries to focus on her figure, flickers, and then goes out. If the EMP got it, at least it got the other helmets on board too. She fires two quick shots behind him and he hears the impact of armor against the floor again. He doesn’t turn around. 

PR-3981 follows her as she moves through the ship and away from the sounds of people approaching. Her footsteps are nearly silent, even though she’s moving at a brisk jog. His own boots, thick soled and heavy, seem deafening in comparison to the lightweight ones she must have on. 

It’s uneventful until she nearly clotheslines him at the third turn they come to when he fails to come to a stop abruptly enough. She grabs his shoulders to balance him and keep the plasticore of his armor from clattering into the wall. From around the corner come two faint voices, gradually growing louder.

“We haven’t taken any damage so far, sir,” a voice says, lacking the quality that comes with speaking through a helmet. “The control room is working on getting power back up again.”

The Mandalorian turns so that her back is to PR-3981’s chest, but her left, blaster-free hand drags across his breastplate and down to his wrist. Her grip is loose, and she tugs gently until he follows her into a crouch, pressed closely to the wall. Her fingers linger for a moment against his pulse and then let go quite suddenly, moving to grip her blaster. PR-3981 mimics her, steadying his own blaster on her pauldron, his heart thumping in his chest. 

Another voice chimes in, closer now, “and the escape pods?”

“All locked down manually, sir.”

“Send more troopers to medical. We need to locate the package.”

Through an insane stroke of luck, when the officers reach the corner, they turn right—away from where PR-3981 and the Mandalorian are crouched. 

PR-3981 lifts his helmet the slightest bit to whisper without the mic amplifying his voice. “I shoot left, you shoot right. One, two, _three.”_

The officers hit the floor within the same second, their falls much quieter than the echo of two blasters going off. 

“We need to _move,”_ the Mandalorian says, standing and peaking around the corner. “Which way is the hanger from here? Right or straight?”

“Right,” PR-3981 answers, getting to his feet. He shoves his helmet down again. “It’s not far from here. Were we going to the escape pods?”

“We’re not anymore. Come on.”

PR-3981 follows her around the corner. “The hanger will be crawling with troopers.”

“Good thing there’s two of us then.” She pauses at the next turn and he points left. 

From there they go straight past two turns and then right, where they find the door to Hanger 3 already open. The Mandalorian goes through first, as she has the whole time, and yanks PR-3981 to the side as soon as he follows her through.

The emergency lighting is faint here, casting long shadows across the open floor that they take full advantage of. There aren’t as many stormtroopers as PR-3981 was expecting, but there’s enough to make his palms start to sweat. The Mandalorian immediately makes for the TIE/SF Fighters, which are plugged in on their racks on the near wall of the hanger. 

“How will we know which ones are fully charged?” he risks whispering. With the power still out, the displays will be dead.

Pausing behind some stacked cargo containers, the Mandalorian turns to look at him over her shoulder. “We’ll just have to use the Force, I guess.”

PR-3981 blinks. “What?”

She raises a gloved finger to where her lips probably are; he gets the message and shuts up. She takes off suddenly to the next patch of shadow and he rushes to follow. They make two more dashes across open space before they find a shadowy spot right by the Fighters.

The Mandalorian pulls something circular out of her belt, around the size of her palm, and hits a few buttons on it. 

PR-3981 leans in for a closer look. “What is that?”

Whatever it is starts beeping, and she hurls it impressively far away, at least thirty or forty yards. It lands near an _Alpha_ -class Xg-1 Star Wing, and after a few tense moments of silence, explodes. The fuel oscillator of the Star Wing goes almost immediately after, and the troopers that are in the hanger rush towards the explosion, blasters drawn. 

PR-3981 realizes it was a carefully chosen target—since they’re hiding by the wall of the hanger that has no entrances, none of the stormtroopers are looking in their direction. The commotion causes the distraction they need to slip into a TIE/SF Fighter without being noticed. 

Climbing in quietly is no easy feat, but he wiggles his way into the gunner position and straps himself in, taking his helmet off at the first opportunity. He’s always felt claustrophobic with it on, and the rush of air he takes in once it’s off centers him considerably. The Mandalorian, in the pilot’s seat, starts flicking at the early ignition array.

PR-3981 pulls his gloves off and tries to orient himself among the switches, buttons, and pedals. “How did you know that these seat two people?”

The Mandalorian makes a sound that might be a laugh. “I didn’t.”

PR-3981 turns to look at the back of her helmet incredulously. “Do you even know how to fly this thing?”

There’s the distinct sound of the Fighter powering up. “In theory.”

“In _theory?_ Are you kriffing—”

“Disable the power cord,” she tells him. “Otherwise we won’t be able to hyperdrive out of here.”

PR-3981 starts hitting buttons at random, wondering why in the hell he ever thought relying on a complete stranger to get him out was a good idea. On his third try, an automated voice notifices them that they’ve disconnected from the power source.

“That should do it,” the Mandalorian says. “Buckled in?”

“Yep,” he calls back. Then, “wait, did you say hyperdri—”

The Mandalorian activates the hyperdrive while they’re still in the hanger, jerking him forward so harshly that his seat belt will probably leave bruises. The stars streak outside the window and PR-3981 raises a gloveless hand to the glass. It’s cold against his fingertips; the sight is enchanting. 

“Dropping out of hyperspace in three, two, one…”

The Fighter comes out of hyperspace much more gently than it entered it. “Did you just jump blind from inside a hanger?” PR-3981 asks, still in shock.

The Mandalorian lets out a sound that is _definitely_ a laugh. “Yeah,” she replies. “Yeah, I did.”

PR-3981 starts laughing himself, giddy with relief. _This must be a dream,_ he thinks. He has no memory of the feeling that flutters under his ribs. He has no memory of laughter bubbling up from his stomach and bursting out of his mouth, joyous and unrestrained.

It feels good.

“If I calculated this right,” the Mandalorian mutters, “she should be...there we go.” 

“ _Whoa,”_ PR-3981 breathes. Growing ever larger is a ship, floating in space. It’s made of a sleek, silvery metal and has a few panels that are painted a kind of sea green. Sitting below the cockpit are some of the largest guns he’s ever seen on a solitary vessel. It’s too big to be a gunship but too decked out to be a freighter; PR-3981 has never seen a ship so stunning. 

“Welcome to the _Athene Noctua,”_ the Mandalorian says. 

The cargo hold is just big enough to land the Fighter in, but once they get into the cockpit of the _Noctua_ the Mandalorian opens up the bay doors and abandons it in space. 

“There’ll be a tracker in it,” she explains when he asks. “Actually, speaking of: strip.”

PR-3981 gapes at her. “Excuse me?”

The Mandalorian pauses. “Your suit,” she says, sounding something other than in control for the first time, “it could have a tracker. First Order’s tricky like that.”

PR-3981 thinks she might be feeling awkward. “Oh. Okay.” _He_ certainly feels awkward, now that the rush of adrenaline is starting to wear off. 

Starting with his boots, he begins to peel off his pieces of armor, stacking them as neatly as he can in a corner of the cockpit. He looks around as he does—it’s not too large, but is clearly made for more than one person. The Mandalorian sits in the copilot chair on the left and leaves her blaster in the one on the right. The corner PR-3981 has backed himself into has mostly control panels, one of which has a very aged looking label that reads _DON’T TOUCH THIS ONE._ Below it, someone has drawn a little face sticking out its tongue, and PR-3981 smiles in surprise at the sight of it. 

Before long, the pile at his feet is huge, and he’s left in only his black under armor, holding his folded up medical files in one hand. Unsure where to keep them, he shoves them in the waistband of his pants for the time being. When he drags off the long sleeved top, there’s a choking sound from behind him. 

PR-3981 turns with the shirt still in his hands. The Mandalorian is staring at him. “That’s not…” she starts. “I meant just the plasticore.”

“Oh. Right.” PR-3981 feels his face flush and looks down. “Of course.” He pulls on the sleeves so they’re not inside out, fingers fumbling as he rushes. 

“What’s that?”

He raises his head and sees that the Mandalorian is now only a step or so away. She points at his inner forearm. 

A few black lines stand out against his skin. “That’s my barcode,” he says. 

The Mandalorian goes very still. “Your barcode,” she repeats, her voice hard. “They put that on your skin.”

“All the troopers have one,” PR-3981 says, feeling inexplicably defensive. He remembers when seeing it on himself had been shocking. The sight of similar tattoos on other stormtroopers in the ‘fresher and barracks had been a comfort. 

Her hand, still covered by a glove, reaches out and presses against the markings. He goes quiet in response, struck dumb by the cool sensation of the leather pushing gently against his arm. She stops about an inch below the tattoo. “What’s this?”

He frowns. “What’s what?”

She pushes down harder in the same spot. “There’s something under your skin,” she tells him. 

PR-3981 drops the shirt and uses his newly freed hand to prod at the same spot. Sure enough, there’s a hard little bump just under the skin. “I have no idea,” he mumbles. 

The Mandalorian curses in a language he doesn’t know. “I’ll bet it’s a chip.” She pauses. “Grab your armor and follow me. I don’t want to get blood in my cockpit.”

PR-3981 somehow manages to get all the pieces of armor in his arms in time to follow her down the twisting halls of her ship without getting lost. His sock clad feet slide against the floor, but he stays upright. 

The first place she leads him is the dump chute, where they shove in the pieces of plasticore in one by one and vacuum them out into space. Eventually, PR-3981 is left holding only his black shirt, and instead of lingering to watch the pieces of white armor float away, they move on to what looks like an equipment room. 

“Sit there,” the Mandalorian tells him, pointing to a half reclined chair. She pulls a first-aid kit out from under some kind of droid parts as he tries to get comfortable. The metal of the chair is cold against his still bare skin. He’d put the shirt back on, but the sleeves don’t really roll up, so he just sets it in his lap. 

The Mandalorian nudges a stool over and sits by his tattooed arm. “Numb shot?”

PR-3981 shrugs. “We have to work quick, right? I’ll be fine.”

She stares at him silently for a long moment. “I’m giving you a numbing shot,” she decides, her tone of voice leaving no room for argument. 

PR-3981 is privately relieved. The shot is the tiniest prick of pain, and given the looks of the knife the Mandalorian has ready, it wouldn’t have been a fun experience. “What brought you to the _Thundercloud?”_ he asks, half bold and half desperate to not sit in awkward silence. 

“I was looking for someone.” She cleans off the blade of the knife. “He was...taken. About a year ago.”

“By the First Order?”

“By what’s left of it.” She prods at his arm. “Feel that?”

He shakes his head. “No. Why was he taken?”

The Mandalorian carefully cuts into the skin of his arm, her movements slow and precise. “If they kept track of crimes, being my husband would have been at the top of the list. I’m not a friend of the First Order. Neither is he, to be honest.”

“Oh,” PR-3981 says. He makes a face at the sight of his own blood oozing out around the knife, but doesn’t feel it. While it might not mean much because of his spotty memory, he doesn’t remember hearing anything about a Mandalorian being taken prisoner—the First Order doesn’t take Mandalorians prisoner, not since the mess on Mandalore two and a half generations ago caused so many issues for the Empire. He hopes that she knows that, because he doesn’t want to tell her that her husband is most likely dead.

“I’ve been tracking him. The trail led to your ship.” She digs a tiny, cylindrical chip out of his arm and puts it in his hand. 

“I’m sorry that you didn’t find him,” he says, honestly.

She tosses the bloody knife across the room with terrifying accuracy, where it sticks to the wall right above a shelving unit of grimy looking armor and weapons. While he gapes, she takes a bacta patch out of the first-aid kit. “So am I,” she replies, her soft voice a direct contrast to her harsh movements.

“You can just stitch me up,” he offers. “There’s no need to waste bacta on something this small.” He isn’t sure how to thank her for all that she’s done for him—he doesn’t know what to do with this amount of offered kindness.

She pauses with the backing of the bacta patch half unpeeled. He wishes he knew what part of his face she was staring at, but the pitch-black t-visor of her helmet offers no clues. Still staring him down and not saying a word, she unpeels the rest of the patch and smacks it onto the cut. “We need to dump this,” she says, taking the chip from his hand, “and get out of this system. Yesterday.”

PR-3981 puts his shirt on again, careful not to disrupt the bacta patch. He looks up after pulling down the hem and finds the same stare being levelled at him. When he gives his new companion an awkward smile, she stands rather abruptly and makes for the door. He notices, as she turns the corner back towards the trash chute, that both the hand holding the tracking chip and the one not are tightly clenched into fists.

He takes his time wandering back to the cockpit. The ship isn’t as large as he first thought it was; most of the internal space is taken up by the cargo bay. Still, he’s surprised that there isn’t anyone on board to meet. The smell of the ship, the lingering scent of something metallic and armor polisher, relaxes him, like someone’s reached into his brain and hit a button made to calm him down. The _Thundercloud_ and its medbay seem worlds away.

By the time he makes a wrong turn and then corrects himself, the Mandalorian is already buckled into the left hand co-pilot seat. “She jumps easy, but you might want to sit down, anyway,” she says right as he walks in, even though she didn’t turn around to see him.

PR-3981 lowers himself into the right-hand chair a bit cautiously, unsure if that’s where she meant for him to sit. She doesn't say anything, so he goes ahead and buckles in. The seatbelt makes something by his waistband crinkle, and when he digs around under his clothing he comes up with the folded medical report. 

The Mandalorian eases the throttle forward and makes the smoothest transition to hyperspace that he’s ever experienced. She relaxes back into her seat and says, “I’m gonna try and get us to Mon Cala, so we’ve got another few minutes until we have to switch to a more clogged lane.” When he doesn’t respond, she swivels around to face him. “What’s that?”

PR-3981 looks up and meets her gaze. “Oh, it’s just my medical records. Kind of.” He shoves it under his thigh; out of sight, out of mind. “Hey, what should I call you?”

She turns back to look out the window. The streaking stars are reflected in the shiny black of her visor, and PR-3981 finds himself incapable of tearing his eyes from the sight of it. “Most people call me Mando,” she finally says.

“That’s not your name.”

“No,” she agrees. “It’s not.”

PR-3981 bites his lip. “You’re not gonna call me trooper or something, are you?”

“No,” she says quickly. “No, I wouldn’t—you don’t have to worry about that.”

“It’s just that PR-3981 is all I remember,” he explains, remembering her insistence that it wasn’t a name. He takes his med report out from under his thigh and unfolds it. If he can’t trust his new companion, he can’t trust anyone. “Eight months ago it says I was ‘submitted for reconditioning.’” He points to the phrase on the piece of paper and hands it over. “I don’t remember that, and I don’t remember anything at all before that. There are all these records of me being treated for minor illnesses since then, but…” He lets the sentence trail off. “I’m not sure that’s true. I think that’s why I haven’t been able to—to think straight. Why my head feels so scrambled. Asking you to get me out of there wasn’t wasn’t even like making a choice, it was more...a feeling.” He clears his throat.

“A feeling.” The paper shakes slightly in the Mandalorian’s grip. “You don’t remember anything from before eight months ago? Anything at all?”

He shakes his head. There’s that unnerving, familiar tickle—something golden. Maybe. Something silver, silver like the Mandalorian’s helmet. He thinks. The sound of someone laughing, high-pitched and bright, though that might just be a dream. A very nice dream. “I know,” he says haltingly, “that I’m not PR-3981. I know that. I just don’t know who—” He cuts himself off, his throat feeling tight.

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “We’ll...we’ll figure it out.” When she hands him the piece of his med report back, the part that had been gripped in her hand is all crinkled.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” he whispers. 

The Mandalorian’s voice turns harsh. “Listen. You don’t need to thank me, okay? Anyone who wants to get out of the First Order deserves to get out. Don’t thank me.”

“But how did you trust me? How do you know I’m not—”

“You fired at the officers,” she interrupts. 

He closes his mouth. Thinks. Then, “what?”

“The officers that passed us, back on the ship? They hadn’t seen us. You could’ve let them go, but you shot them.”

He remembers: crouching on the floor behind her, the blaster he snagged held steady on her pauldron. Above everything, he remembers the way the officers’ soft bodies hit the floor with hardly a sound. 

“That’s how I knew,” she continues, “that you were you, not them—that you needed out.”

Something on the control panel in front of them beeps, and the Mandalorian takes the throttle in her hand and eases it back. As her wrist moves, a space between her glove and vambrace reveals the tiniest sliver of tan skin. He stares at it as the light of the stars shorten and turn back into little pinpricks against black, feeling like his stomach is flopping around like a fish on land.

“We’ll switch to the more trafficked route from here,” she says, maneuvering the _Noctua_ carefully while looking at the specs on her screen. “Alright, ready?”

He nods and they’re back to hyperspace again, the transition smooth like the folds of his bunk covers had been that morning. Stars, it’s barely been a few hours—he shakes his head and tries to focus on the present. “Why the Mon Cala system?” he asks.

The Mandalorian pauses. “I met my husband there,” she finally says. “On Poseidenna. I know it well. There’s a place we can lay low, throw off a potential trail.”

He whistles. “I didn’t know Poseidenna was habitable.”

“It isn’t.” He isn’t sure why, but he gets the impression that the Mandalorian’s smiling.

“I’ve always wanted to see an ocean world,” he tells her. This has been the most she’s said to him, and he wants to return the favor in some way, wants to share just like she had. “I’ve never been to the Calamari sector.”

Whatever his goal was, speaking has the opposite effect. The Mandalorian’s shoulders go stiff and she turns away. “We’ll be in this lane for a while.” Her voice is hard, so much so that it almost sounds brittle. “You should get some rest. Follow me.”

She’s out of her chair and in the hallway before he can even get unbuckled. With his crumpled and folded medical report in his hand, he slides his way after her, rushing to keep up as they go through parts of the ship he hasn’t seen before. In general, every area they pass strikes him as well lived in, with clutter and marks of age, but he also gets the impression that it’s been quite some time since anything was moved. A partly disassembled blaster in the common area they breeze through is covered in a film of dust. He doesn’t have time to linger on anything he sees, wary of being left behind as the Mandalorian plows onward, but it’s another added piece of the puzzle that is now his life. 

He rounds a corner to find the Mandalorian entering an access code to a doorway. By the time he’s standing next to her, it’s swished open, revealing a room just barely big enough for the bed and dresser that’s in it, the covers sloppily pulled up as though someone had made the bed in order to say they had done it, not for actual tidiness. It certainly wouldn’t pass First Order inspection. 

The Mandalorian gestures for him to enter. “The ‘fresher’s through that door,” she says, pointing. “It’s sonic, not water, but it does the trick.”

The room is cold, but not much colder than the rest of the ship. His eyelids feel heavy at the sight of a bed—he doesn’t have a memory of sleeping in anything larger than a single, but the way he has the urge to spread out his limbs and sink into the mattress suggests that maybe he did, before. In whatever life he led before his world was perfectly made beds and white plasticore armor. 

“Are you cold?”

He turns to see that the Mandalorian is still standing in the doorway, the toes of her boots not passing the invisible barrier between the room and the hallway. “I’m alright,” he answers, actively working to suppress a shiver. Her stare is just as unnerving as it has been all day; he can _feel_ her eyes on him, even if he can’t see them himself.

His answer doesn’t seem to convince him. “There should be…” She pauses for a breath and then takes a step into the room, pausing again once she’s past the doorway. He watches as she opens one of the dresser drawers and digs around, eventually pulling out a few pieces of clothing. “These should fit you,” she says, putting them on the bed. “Let me know if you need more blankets or anything.”

His head tilts to the side, more and more confused and intrigued by everything he learns about her. She seems hesitant around him, almost cautious. She’s always _pausing,_ like she’s trying to figure out where to step next in a minefield. 

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Thank you.” She doesn’t respond, but doesn’t move either, not for a good, long moment. He shifts on his feet, not sure if she expects him to strip down in front of her again or if there’s something else he should say. When the tension becomes too much for him to handle, he offers her a smile.

There’s the tiniest movement from the corner of his vision—when he glances down, he sees that her hand is flexing and relaxing strangely. Seconds after he’s looked away from her face—helmet?—she leaves the room. She vanishes so quickly that he’s afraid he’s accidentally offended her. Maybe smiling means something different in Mandalorian society? The sound of her footsteps fade slowly until he’s left standing alone, shivering. Maybe it’s from the chill of the room, but there’s a tickle at the back of his mind that makes him think otherwise.

The shirt that the Mandalorian had laid out of the bed is a dark, deep blue, made out of a woven and sturdy fabric. When he peels off his under armor to put it on, he’s pleasantly surprised to see that it does indeed fit him well. It’s soft against his skin in a way that he isn’t used to, and the pants with the elastic waistband are much the same.

His eyes wander as he uses the vac tube in the refresher. There are two toothbrushes by the sink, one green and one blue, and some dried toothpaste on the faucet. He leaves the toothbrushes untouched and makes do with just toothpaste on his finger. When he raises his head after spitting, he has to blink hard in order to see himself in the reflection that gazes back.

His hair is far messier than should possible, given how short the First Order requires it to be kept. One side is sticking up funny, no doubt from the helmet he’d had earlier. The lingering taste of mint in his mouth makes his head pound. It’s different from the gray and vaguely acidic tasting toothpaste that fills up his memory, and the freshness of his mouth brings a phantom sensation of warmth against his side.

He turns, but no one is standing next to him. Blinking hard, he stumbles out of the ‘fresher before his eyes can linger on the toothbrushes any longer, hitting the lights as he goes. He makes his way to the far side of the bed and slips under the covers. Slowly, his limbs relax into the alien softness of the mattress, and his last coherent action before falling asleep is reaching out to the empty pillow.

//

In his dream, there is gold and silver and the sound of someone laughing.

_Percy,_ a voice says, warm like honey. _I’m not going to let them take you away from me._ There’s a woman—brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin like his own—looking down at him, stroking his hair. _You’ll be safe here._

There’s the laughter again, and the smell of salt and water stretching as far out as he can see. _Percy,_ a second voice says, high pitched and fond. _You’re not getting away from me that easily._

Something silver. Something gold.

He wakes up with a name stuck in his throat. He blinks once, twice, and it’s gone.

The usual, quiet hum of a ship in hyperspace is what he hears first. As a hand flops to his chin to wipe away some drool, he registers the faint sound of conversation. Throwing back the covers, he pads his way out of the bedroom and into the hallway, towards the voices.

When he reaches the common area they passed through the night before, he stops. The Mandalorian sits in front of a holo-call, her back to him, talking quietly to someone that he can’t quite see.

“We’re going to safehouse Triton,” she’s saying. “I don’t know for how long.”

The second voice is also female but sounds older—sounds familiar. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You know—”

“Please, Sally,” the Mandalorian interrupts. “Just...trust me.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

The Mandalorian lets out a laugh, distorted and unhappy through her helmet. “Well. It’s a little late for that.”

“Still, that’s so far away. You could come home.”

“Maybe this is stupid,” the Mandalorian says, almost whispering, “but I can’t help but think that once we’re there, he might...”

There’s a staticy sigh. “Oh, sweetie.”

The Mandalorian sits in silence on the call for a long time, and in that space he realizes where he knows the second voice from—his dream. Warm and deep, it’s stored hand in hand with a vague impression of gentle brown eyes.

His brain still feels like thawing butter, like it’s trying so hard to figure everything out that it’s overheating and having a full system shutdown. The voice on the call—Sally, that’s what the Mandalorian had called her—is one of the voices from his dream. He isn’t surprised that he would subconsciously pick up on a voice from the holo he was hearing from down the hall and insert it into a dream, but it does come with a shot of disappointment. He thought, maybe…he shakes his head and retreats a few paces as quietly as he can, until the Mandalorian is out of view. He waits, fakes a loud yawn, and then walks forward with heavy steps.

By the time the Mandalorian is in view again, she’s hung up the holo-call and turned in her seat. “Sleep well?” 

He nods, and sits in one of the few seats not occupied by various ship and droid parts. “Slept great. I had a dream, actually.”

The silvery helmet tilts slightly to one side. “Is that unique?”

“Yeah.” He smiles at her. “It’s awesome, I—I don’t really remember having one before, not like this. I think…” He bites at his lower lip. 

“You think?” She leans forward a bit.

“I think I might know my name.”

The Mandalorian’s sharp inhale isn’t a gasp, exactly, but is just loud enough for him to hear. “Oh,” she breathes out. “That’s—that’s great. Was it in your dream?”

“Yeah, it’s—there was someone in my dream that called me Percy and it just felt right.” He wishes, certainly not for the first time, that he knew what the Mandalorian might think of that, but she stays as impossible to read as ever. “It felt obvious, almost. Like I spent hours searching for my blaster only to find it was in my holster the whole time.”

“Percy,” she says, the soft quality of her voice made more forced by her helmet mic. 

Percy grins at her. “Yeah,” he responds. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Percy,” she repeats. 

He waits for her to talk again, but it never comes. The air between them feels thick, almost, like there’s something one of them needs to say but doesn’t know the words for.

Finally, she asks, “how’s your arm?” 

He pulls up the sleeve of the shirt she gave him and peeks under the bacta patch. At the sight of a faint pink line, he peels it off. “All good,” he tells her, showing off his inner forearm. “Thanks again for the patch.”

“Of course.” She stands and gestures over her shoulder. “Hungry?”

Once she’s said it, Percy’s very aware of the gnawing grumble of his stomach. “Yeah, actually. Where should I toss this?” He holds up the used bacta patch.

“Oh.” She looks around at the impressive clutter around them, as though she’s only just noticed how messy it is. “Sorry, I’ve...there hasn’t been much time to clean, lately. There’s a trash bin in the pantry.”

Percy remembers suddenly: her husband, the search, and the dead end at his ship. He has the urge to reach out and touch the Mandalorian’s shoulder, to do something to offer her comfort, but isn’t sure if it would be appreciated. His hands, jittery with an energy he doesn’t know how to focus, stay by his side. He could tell her that the slight chaos is so foreign to the bleached, pristine nature of the First Order that he feels comforted by it, but he doesn’t want to force her to make her life about him any more than he already is. 

“It’s actually just through here.” She jerks her head towards an alcove off the side of the room they’re in, and when Percy follows her he sees it’s an almost-kitchen, filled with shelves of non-perishable food. She points to a chute on the wall. “There’s the trash. We should have something better than your average ration packs.” The shine of her helmet disappears into a cupboard.

Bacta patch disposed of, Percy looks through the items stacked on a shelf near him until one catches his eye. It’s some kind of preserved meat, he thinks. “What’s this?”

“What?” The helmet reappears and focuses on the wrapped item in his hand. “Oh, that’s—you don’t like that.”

He raises his eyebrows. 

“I mean, you won’t. It’s just that no one but me actually likes that,” she rushes to say. “It’s really spicy. And bitter.”

“Okay,” Percy mutters slowly, carefully putting it back in its place. “If you have a protein portion or nutritional shake, that’s fine. I don’t really know what I’d like, so…” He shrugs. 

The Mandalorian curses softly. Percy couldn’t say the language it was in, but his brian gives him the translation: _send me to the crows._ He doesn’t know how he knows, but it’s definitely a curse. “Sorry,” she says in Basic. “You can pick anything you’d like. Try it out if you want.”

Three hastily drunk glasses of water, Percy is wishing he’d listened to her warning. “You’re laughing at me,” he gasps out between sips, trying frantically to get rid of the burning sensation on his tongue. “I know you’re laughing at me.”

The Mandalorian raises her hands in innocence despite the slight shake of her shoulders. “I would never.”

Percy laughs even though the rush of air makes the burning worse. “Liar.” He’s still smiling as he reaches up to wipe at his tearing eyes, but a gloved hand grasps his wrist before he can. 

“Watch your eyes,” she tells him, the shape of her words sounding almost fond. “You touched the jerky with your fingers.”

“Oh.” He blinks a few times and the tears run down his cheeks. “Thanks.”

“Here.” She takes off a glove, revealing thin fingers and short, bitten down nails. Carefully, she runs the pads of her fingertips under his eyes, wiping away the tears. Her hands are rough and calloused, but also warm and surprisingly gentle. It’s only when she takes a step back again that he realized he’s stopped breathing.

When air returns to his lungs it brings the burning sensation on his tongue with it, so he fumbles for the glass of water again. His face feels hot; he blames it on the spice. Awkwardly, he holds out a piece of the jerky. “Do you want some?”

Her helmet shifts just enough that he can tell she’s looking down at his hand. “I already ate,” she tells him, “but thank you.”

Percy was never sure if Mandalorians actually kept their helmets on all the time or whether that was just a rumor, but he doesn’t think now’s the best time to ask. He doesn’t want to offend her, not when she’s just given him his choice of food and the best rest he remembers having. He shoves the piece back into its package and seals it again, giving himself something to focus on so he won’t ask an invasive or inappropriate question. The cabinet the Mandalorian left open from earlier catches his eye. “I think I saw some...bread portions?”

“Oh, we’ve— _I’ve_ got loads of those.” She’s already opened a package onto a little plate, and he steps closer to watch the bread puff up when she adds the water. “I’m no chef, but even I can manage this.”

He snorts. “Anything’s better than a nutritional shake. Even that fire-jerky.”

She lets out a real laugh and passes the plate over. “Well, there’s plenty of this. It doesn’t really expire, so it’s good to store long-term.”

Percy might’ve been interested to listen another time, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the generous, full portion that’s been given to him. When he touches the crust, still a bit warm from the chemical reaction, he nearly starts to drool. His self control goes out the vacuum after that; he lifts the whole piece and sinks his teeth into it.

It tastes even better than he imagined, with the soft inside and crunch of the crust. Percy barely even chews his first bite he’s so hungry for more, stuffing as much into his mouth as he reasonably can. He’s beginning to actually savor it a bit when the silence of the room registers, and he looks up from his food.

The Mandalorian’s watching him, like she so often is. “Percy,” she starts, sounding a bit cautious. “You’ve had bread before, right?”

He swallows too soon and feels a lump travel all the way down to his stomach. “Once,” he says. “When I was stationed on a cruiser, Captain Atticus gave everyone a half-portion on his birthday. That’s pretty common on smaller ships.”

She closest the cabinet door incredibly gently, as though it’s taking a lot of effort. “Oh.”

He shoves another bite into his mouth, hunger sated just enough that he can remember to try and chew with his mouth closed. “This is really good,” he tells her after swallowing. “You could totally be a chef if you wanted to.”

Her hand, still gloveless, reaches towards him. It pauses in the air between them, like she’s hit an invisible wall, and it gets drawn back. “Thanks.” She clears her throat. “I need to check on our nav, but help yourself. Really, anything’s up for grabs.”

She’s stalked out of the room before he can say anything in response. Percy hopes he hasn’t said something stupid again, but knowing him, he probably has. The portions of bread he scarfs down settle in his stomach solidly, killing his hunger quickly and effectively in the way the nutritional shakes he’s used to never do. 

As he stacks the unused portions back into the cupboard, Percy notices that this room is far better organized than the one it’s adjacent to. Much like the other parts of the ship he’s seen, it seems like it hasn’t been used for a long time. There’s something cold about it; something a little too still. 

He feels a bit ill, suddenly. The at first pleasing sensation of being full has now adapted to something like a rock in his stomach, dense and heavy. When he steps back out into the main common room, the buzz in his head settles a bit—the mess is foreign, and the messiness of that is safe. 

Percy’s tempted to snoop around, but the chill of open space is beginning to seep through the shirt the Mandalorian had given him now that he isn’t also under a blanket. When he makes his way back to the bunk he’d slept in, he considers whether or not to make the bed for a solid minute before tugging the blankets up and tucking them under the mattress. He doesn’t know what awaits them on Poseidenna, or where the Mandalorian is aiming to go from there, but he doesn’t want to be left behind.

The bubbling sensation in his stomach he got in the TIE/SF Fighter, and just now when he had nearly died from the spice of whatever jerky the Mandalorian had told him not to eat, is addicting. Smoothing down the covers, the memory of loneliness hits him like a reminder.

It’s one of the few memories he has. The Mandalorian had managed to banish it from his mind in less than a day. As long as she’s alright with them travelling together, he isn’t going to fuck it up.

Percy even picks up the black under armor he’d left on the floor, although he’s unsure where to put it. Eventually, he opens up the drawer the Mandalorian had gotten his clothes from and shoves it inside. He pulls out a shirt made of a thick, dark material, but when he shakes it out he finds it’s clearly meant for a smaller and slimmer body than his own. His luck is better with the next piece of clothing he picks—it’s a similar material but more his size. In fact, when he pulls it over his head, it fits him almost perfectly. He searches for pants next, with similar success. His medical report stays crumpled on top of the dresser next to some armor polish.

He avoids the ‘fresher and its mirror and the two toothbrushes by the sink. They make his head hurt.

The cockpit is found without any wrong turns this time, but the sight of the Mandalorian hunched over, resting her helmet in her hands, makes him pause. He raps his knuckles on the doorway. “Knock knock,” he says, feeling ridiculous as soon as the words pass his lips. 

Her helmet snaps up. “Hey.” She clears her throat. “Get enough to eat?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Percy gestures at himself. “I hope you don’t mind—I borrowed some clothes.”

“You’re fine.” She gestures at the free seat. “You can sit, if you want.”

He takes her up on the offer, sliding into the right hand co-pilot chair. A quick glance at the nav tells him they’ve only got a few more minutes in hyperspace.

“I think there’s some boots in the equipment room that should be your size,” the Mandalorian tells him. “I’ll dig around once we’re done at the intersection.”

“This ship really has it all,” Percy muses. “I’m surprised you can run it by yourself.” He stops, winces. “I mean—”

The Mandalorian snorts. “You’re fine. I know what you mean; I designed it to only need a two person crew, for the element of surprise, you know? She’s so big that it’s misleading. I had to adjust the software since…” 

The despair of the unspoken end to her sentence hangs between them. _Since her husband was taken and probably murdered,_ Percy’s mind fills in. His pessimism distracts him from the earlier part of her sentence until: “Wait, you _designed_ this ship?”

The tension bends. “Yep,” she says, running a gloved hand along the control panel. “Built her, too. This is my baby.”

“Whoa.” He looks around him with newfound appreciation. It explains why the cargo bay is so abnormally large—it’s been custom made. “What kind of firepower do you have?”

“Our guns can be swapped out, actually, so it depends on what’s needed. The only one I never really change is the null-burst projector, but we’ve got minelayers, a fusion accelerator cannon, a QV-Distributor, barrage rockets, a few flak guns…” She shrugs. “You name it, really. It’s all about balancing heavier fire power against speed and nimbleness.”

Percy whistles softly, impressed. “And they’re all controlled from up here?”

She sighs, sounding frustrated. “The cannons are. I rerouted most of them through a software to be able to fire from the cockpit, but most of the guns aren't really that effective unless there’s someone in the gunner bay. The sight lines are better.”

Percy, who’s a little disappointed he never got to fire the guns on the TIE/SF Fighter they briefly acquired, feels his fingers twitch. Firing a blaster has always felt a bit unnatural in a way he can’t quite place, mostly because it comes with the lingering feeling that he should be fighting much more up close with his enemies. Still, he can’t deny the rush of adrenaline he gets just _thinking_ about firing a QV-Distributor.

“I always kind of wanted to submit for TIE flight school,” he admits. “Or hand-to-hand combat training.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I got moved around too much. Plus, that kind of speciality path is usually decided when you’re in the academy, and I…” He clears his throat. “Well, I don’t really know how that went. Or if it went, even.”

“Hey, you remembered your name,” she says with a kind of forced cheerfulness. “That’s a start. Who knows what else will come back to you?”

“Do you think they might have files or something? On me?”

She swivels her chair to face him more directly. “Who, the First Order? They have data files on everything. It’s how I found the _Thundercloud.”_

Percy snorts. “That doesn’t seem, uh…”

“Smart?” the Mandalorian interjects. “Yeah, it’s kriffing stupid, but also pretty convenient. For me, at least.” She slouches a bit and crosses her arms, bringing a foot up to rest against the edge of Percy’s seat. She looks comfortable—Percy realizes, pretty belatedly, that this ship is very much her home.

“I was just thinking that if they mentioned rec-reconditioning,” he stutters, his brain only focusing on where the toe of the Mandalorian’s boot is grazing his thigh, “on my medical report, then they might have more somewhere else, where they thought I’d never see.”

The Mandalorian’s fingers drum against her bicep. “It’s not a bad idea,” she muses after a few long seconds of consideration. “At this point, the bulk of their data is all in space, since they don’t have any strongholds in specific systems, anymore. If they were smart, they’d divide it so no one station has everything, but…” She shrugs.

“...but they’re not smart,” Percy finishes. “So, it’s all in one place?”

“Not exactly. Their remaining ships are being picked off as the Republic manages to stabilize more and more of the Outer Rim, so doing that could cripple them completely. What they _do_ have is one egotistical maniac left in charge who needs to have all of the information at their fingertips at the drop of a helmet.”

Percy perks up. “And they’d have to be able to receive transmissions wherever they were?”

“Got it in one.”

“So, you could slice into their system and get data transmitted to you? Or just request it, if you had the right code clearance?”

“You’d probably have to be on the flagship for it to work, and have the right trooper name, but yeah. It’s possible.”

The console in front of them beeps, drawing the Mandalorian’s attention away. She moves to sit centrally in her seat again, one gloved hand going to the hyperspace control. “This should be quick,” she says. “Mon Cala only has planet specific customs, not system-wide like the Corellian Sector, so they’ll just check our registration and we can jet off from there on our own. Minntooine Spur route isn’t normally that crowded, and it’s dead space from there to Poseidenna.”

Percy blinks, completely lost. “Sure,” he agrees.

To his surprise, the Mandalorian laughs in response. “Just sit tight, Percy. I’ll handle it.”

The console beeps again and she eases them out of hyperspace. Percy leans forward in his seat to get closer to the sight of the intersection, trying to soak in everything he can. “I’ve never seen an intersection like this before,” he tells her. 

“Right, most are regulated at this point. I doubt First Order ships would take the risk.”

The coms crackle with static briefly and a bored voice fills the _Noctua’s_ cockpit. “This is Mon Cala Intersection 23B-7, identify yourself and purpose.”

The Mandalorian switches the coms on and answers a few questions the operator asks them, mostly just confirming that they know that Poseidenna has no sentient life or land masses, and Percy takes the time to take in the ships that surround them. Most look like cargo haulers, which is no surprise—Mon Cala is known for trade, not tourism—and most are designs he’s only ever seen holos of. To say they’re massive would be a bit of an understatement. He’s so distracted by them, in fact, that he almost misses the two smaller ships that move steadily through the intersection.

Percy lunges forward and switches the coms off. The Mandalorian twists to face him—he imagines that she’s probably got an incredulous look on her face. He points towards the two ships.

“Those are First Order ships,” he hisses. “And they’re headed right for us.”

Her helmet turns to follow where he’s pointed, and when she spots the purposefully bland-looking patrol ships slowly making their way towards the _Noctua._ She curses quietly but violently and then switches the coms back on, replying to the voice that had been droning on as Percy distracted her.

“Last second change of plans, _Base 1—_ we’ll be joining the line for Mon Cala instead.”

The bored sounding voice asks a few questions about what they’re carrying—nothing, according to the Mandalorian—and then tells them they’re all squared away. When the cockpit is quiet again, she turns to look at him. “You’re sure?” she asks, guiding the ship towards the long, slow moving line of other spacecrafts looking to enter the atmosphere of Mon Calamari.

“Positive,” he says grimly. “I’ve seen them in the hangers. They’re supposed to look bland like that.”

“How the kriff did they even find us? Do you think you have another chip somewhere?” 

“No, they—I mean, I don’t think so, but I didn’t even realize I had the first.” Percy rubs at his forehead. “Those patrol ships go in and out pretty frequently, I thought they just did basic reconnaissance stuff.”

“Like hanging out at highly trafficked intersections,” she realizes. “Oh, those kriffing bastards.”

Percy bites at his lip. “Should I go to the gunner bay?”

“What?” Her helmet snaps towards him, then back out to space. “No, they can’t shoot at us in a place this crowded. We’ll have to lose them on Mon Cala.”

“Do you have a safehouse there, too?”

“No, but those trading ports are infamously confusing. We’ll be able to shake them there and take off to somewhere else.” She drums her fingers along the control panel. “Actually…” she muses, “we might not take off.”

Percy raises an eyebrow. 

“Don’t give me that look,” the Mandalorian says, even though her helmet is definitely blocking her view of him. “I’ve got a plan.”

“What kind of plan?”

“C’mon,” she says, cajoling. “Don’t you trust me?” The quiet after her question is tense. “I mean—” she starts.

“Yeah,” Percy interrupts, realizing it’s the truth as the words pass his lips. “Yeah, I do.”

//

Despite landing the _Noctua_ under considerable cover in a densely forested area, the Mandalorian spends a good half an hour hovering over her radar system for any sign of the two patrol ships. Percy manages to find the boots she mentioned—which do fit him, in the end—and, at her instruction, even straps one of her spare vibroknives to the thigh not already holding his blaster. There’s trust in the request, the same seemingly thoughtless trust that she had on the _Thundercloud,_ where she him trail behind her in enemy territory.

“Ready?” She asks, standing in the doorway of the equipment room with a heavy cloak on and a few bags slung over her shoulder. One hand holds a waterproof looking jacket, which she holds out towards him. “It can get chilly, and we’ve got a bit of a speeder ride to get into town.”

The anticipation builds as they make their way to the cargo bay, but Percy just focuses on trying to zip up the jacket instead of his thumping heartbeat. He helps her untie the speeder from its spot in the corner, but lets her guide it to the door on her own. There’s nothing he can do but stand still and watch as Mon Cala appears from behind the lowering gangplank.

The world is gray and green—trees and moss and heavy mist, bark a deep brown so dark it’s almost black. As if he’s in a trance, he follows the Mandalorian out into the air.

For the first time he can remember, Percy steps onto solid ground. The clearing they’re in smells _fantastic—_ salty and crisp, the scent seems almost alive compared to the recycled spaceship air he’s used to. 

The forest floor is strangely spongy under his boots, and he bites down on a what’s probably a stupid grin as he hops up and down on the balls of his feet. The mist shrouds the trees around them and leaves the _Noctua_ camouflaged in a sea of gray. The Mandalorian would probably fade into it just the same if not for the shine of her helmet.

Percy tilts his head back and takes in a breath so deep it makes his lungs ache. The trees stretch up around them, but right right above his head is nothing but clouds and open air.

The Mandalorian looks back to see if he’s following, sees that he isn’t, and stops. She turns fully and leans back against the speeder, crossing her arms and taking him in the way he’s taking in the world. The fog is condensing onto her armour, probably dooming it to a painstaking cleaning session, and yet she doesn’t seem to be in a rush.

“It’s beautiful.” It’s all Percy can think to say, but the words don’t feel like an adequate representation of the feeling in his chest.

“Sure is,” she responds, looking as relaxed as can be despite the tail the First Order most likely has on them. The dark t-shape of her visor locks fiercely onto him, sharply contrasted by the way she stands, still and relaxed and soft, somehow. As though she too sees something beautiful in the clearing. 

Percy’s beyond grateful that she doesn’t rush him—he just breathes and grins and blinks back the unexpected moisture in his eyes while she waits. Eventually he clears his throat and nods at her. “Ready.”

She swings a leg over the speeder and gestures at the space behind her. Once his arms come to hold around her waist, she takes off into the trees. The greens and grays blur around them; Percy closes his eyes. One cheek is pressed against the cool metal of her helmet, and the rest of his face prickled with tiny droplets of water as they cut through the forest. The wind cuts through his hair, and before he knows it he’s grinning again, overstimulated and overwhelmed.

This world is beautiful. Percy’s laughter gets lost in the mist.

//

Percy hangs back as the Mandalorian rents a room for them. The Mon Calamari at the desk doesn’t speak Basic, but manages to find a common language with Percy’s armor-clad savior that he doesn’t understand. Their conversation is brief, a few sentences at most, and then she’s flashing a credit chip and taking two room keys. 

“Come on,” she says to Percy. “We’re down the hall.”

It’s not that far of a walk, but he’s on edge enough to catalogue the three routes to exits that he notices, along with a possible fourth in an air vent by the ceiling. Once the Mandalorian finally stops at a door, he’s nearly convinced himself that he’s going to have to try and fit in that tiny space—he doesn’t do well with such tiny spaces, doesn’t like to be restrained. 

It’s those thoughts that distract him from noticing the bed, at first. The singular bed. 

“Um,” he says, blanching as he realizes. 

“You can drop that anywhere.” The Mandalorian brushes past him and starts scanning the lighting fixtures of the room with her vambraces. 

Percy lets the bag he offered to carry fall to the floor. Does she even sleep? He’s never had any proof of it. Maybe she’s a droid under that silver bucket. 

“Well, it’s all clear now, but I’ll want to check again later. Never know who might be listening.” She rests her hands on her hips, pushing her cloak back and revealing an impressive array of knives. No wonder she didn’t mind him borrowing one. “You tired still?”

Percy shakes his head. If anything, he feels like he’s made of bottled up energy, like a solar storm has gotten trapped in his limbs. He feels—twitchy. The Mandalorian’s fingers drum along her hips and maybe...maybe she knows the feeling, too.

“You up to explore a bit, then?” She picks up one of the satchels she’d taken from the ship and swings it over her helmet. “I’ve got some transmissions to send out before we can leave and need a good spot to send them from. We could walk around town, maybe see the water? It’d make me feel better to get an idea of the neighborhood, anyway.”

Percy blinks at her, vaguely curious if the joy he feels spark in his chest is visible on his face. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “Yes. Let’s do that.” 

Just in case, they move the bags to the chest provided at the foot of the bed. The Mandalorian snicks a padlock into place and twists the numbers so that they’re random. “I’m not leaving anything that valuable, but…” She shrugs, clearing her throat harshly. “Better safe than sorry. Learned that the hard way. Passcode is 0818 if you need anything,” she tells him.

After double checking that Percy is sure he’ll be warm enough, they make their way back through the hallways and out into the outskirts of town. The open air helps his restlessness, despite the gloominess of the day. The speeder stays locked up, which Percy is silently glad about—he wants to stretch his legs, if he’s being honest. He wants to explore. The Mandalorian walks quickly, but Percy doesn’t have much trouble keeping up, eager to see everything he can. 

“This is a smaller town, not far from Hikahi—that’s a major spaceport, was a base for the Alliance during the Civil War,” she tells him, directing him to the walking path with a casual touch to his arm. At this point, he mostly wonders about what she _doesn’t_ know. “It means there’s a lot of comm chatter, and can be a bantha to get a clear signal. Great for a place to lay low, but annoying since I need to get this message out.” 

They wander throughout the twisting streets, the Mandalorian vaguely leading the way. Percy’s too wrapped up in the growing amount of activity surrounding them, from food vendors to the odd peddler of unfamiliar items of loudly assured worth. When he thinks no one’s looking he purposefully walks through a few puddles, nearly giggling at the splash. He almost gets away with it, he thinks, until he glances back up to find the Mandalorian a few paces ahead, patiently waiting. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, feeling his face heat up. 

“Don’t apologize.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “The shipyard’s not far from here. Some of the bigger fishing vessels might be docked this time of day.”

Percy perks up and then tries to school his expression, not wanting to look like a six year-old. “You think so?” 

“Let’s find out.” 

He follows her around a corner and into a far busier street. Without even looking back, she reaches behind her and grabs his arm, leading him through the mass of sentients. Percy goes willingly, eyes wide at the sheer number of different beings in one space, and almost doesn’t realize as her grip slides down to his wrist, then to his palm. 

Her hand is warm through the glove she wears. Percy remembers the way it had felt against his cheek, calloused and gentle. 

He remembers—

Percy shakes his head, hard. The ache around his temples is back, growing steadily, making the world spin. Someone knocks into his shoulder, sending him staggering to the side, gripping the Mandalorian’s hand tightly to keep from losing her entirely. 

“ _Hey!”_ Her helmet-distorted voice cuts through the noise of the crowd, sharp and threatening. “Watch where you’re going, _besom.”_

The crowd flows around them, giving a good amount of space now that the Mandalorian has brought attention to herself in all her armored glory. She stands between Percy and the poor Rodian who dared get too close, who shrinks away from them, hands held up in innocence. 

She turns slowly, her visor dragging over the crowd until it comes to rest Percy. “Alright?”

He nods, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s just a bit, um...overwhelming?” 

“Right. Of course. Here, we can—let’s get out of the market.” She elbows her way through to a less trafficked part of the street, making sure Percy is right behind her, safe from being knocked off balance again. Once their backs are pressed against a graffitied wall, Percy finally feels like he can think clearly again.

“That was...I don’t know why I panicked,” he finally says.

“It’s okay.” Her voice evenly measured. “Let’s just breathe for a bit.”

“No, it’s—” Percy groans and runs a hand through his hair. The shortness of it just bothers him more. “I keep feeling like I’m making progress, like...I _want_ to see markets like this. I was excited. I _am_ excited. I don’t know why this is happening.” Is he talking too fast? It feels kind of like he’s talking too fast.

The Mandalorian’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder. The touch is purposeful, grounding. “Percy.”

He turns his head. His own reflection is visible in the blackness of her visor, but that makes everything worse. The face staring back, confused and upset, is just a familiar stranger.

Fingers dig into his traps. “Breathe,” the Mandalorian commands.

Percy breathes.

“I should apologize,” she murmurs as he shudders against the wall. “The market was a bad idea. I should’ve taken you right to the water.”

“Don’t apologize,” he says, half asking. “I can’t—I’m not fragile. I’m not crazy. My head just feels like pudding, sometimes.”

Her hand, closer to his neck now, relaxes. “Pudding?” Something about the quality of her voice—he thinks she might be smiling. 

“Yep.” He cracks a smile. “Head fulla pudding, that’s me.”

“Better than a helmet full of one.”

Percy thinks of the white plasticore he was surrounded by and can’t help but agree, but: “I don’t know, it might make a pretty good bowl.”

The sound of the Mandalorian’s laughter rises above the cacophony of the crowd. Percy listens at first, grinning, and then joins in. 

“Can’t argue with that.” She’s definitely smiling now, Percy’s sure of it. After a quick pat to his shoulder, she takes her hand away and gestures in a vague direction. “Ocean’s that way. Probably going to get the clearest signal there.”

Percy pushes away from the wall, eager to move again despite the way his temples still throb. This time, he’s led through the outskirts of the crowd, right up against the storefronts they go past. He’s so focused on not knocking into anyone again that it takes him until he nearly runs into her back to realize that the Mandalorian’s stopped. 

The docks stretch out in front of them, finally visible from where they stand, and beyond that is the dark, churning mass of the ocean. 

Percy staggers forward, feeling enchanted, until he’s right by the water’s edge. Fishermen leave him be, seemingly content to bustle around him. Looking down into the white foam and deep blue depths, Percy feels far more like he’s gazing back at himself than he ever has looking in a mirror. 

“I think the ocean is important to me, somehow,” he says when he feels the warmth of the Mandalorian’s body next to his own. Still, he doesn’t look away from the water. 

“Do you remember something?”

He shakes his head. “No. No, just...a feeling.”

“A feeling better than a pudding brain?”

Percy snorts, knocking his shoulder into hers. “Yes. It’s a bit like...a cool rag when you’ve got a fever, I guess. Along the back of your neck. Makes the hairs want to stand up only there’s something pressing them down, so they can’t.”

A clump of something smacks into the deck with a wet slap. They both look down at it as it gets washed back away. 

“Seaweed,” Percy says aloud. “I guess it’s like seaweed in my brain. Instead of pudding, I mean.”

The Mandalorian wheezes out a laugh, one that sounds half hysterical and half strangled. 

“Hey,” he protests weakly, starting to laugh himself, the ridiculousness of it hitting him belatedly. “I’m trying to be vulnerable. You can’t—stop _laughing_ —” His own words dissolve into syncopated syllables of sound, undecipherable between his gasps of breath and choked off laughs. When he leans over and braces his hands on knees, the Mandalorian pats at his back. 

“Sorry,” she says. A wild giggle bursts free again, something he’s certainly never heard from her before. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to laugh. I’m sorry. You said the ocean’s important?”

Percy chuckles again, releasing it all in one big breath, and straightens up again. The sight of the water has honed his brain onto the right frequency, the way the appearance of the Mandalorian had in the med bay the day before. “Yeah. The ocean’s important.” He clears his throat and smiles over at her, most of his focus absorbed with how her hand still lingers at the small of his back. A lot of things feel important, really. He should make a list. “Can we go back to the market?” he asks.

Her hand falls away. “Are you sure?” She sounds cautious. 

He nods firmly. “I don’t want to coddle myself. I liked seeing everything, it was just...a lot. I’m prepared this time.” The lack of touch makes him a bit jittery; he only becomes aware of how he’s scratching at his neck after he’s been doing it for a good ten seconds. It takes conscious effort to make himself stop. “How’s your signal?”

The Mandalorian fishes her comms out of the bag slung over her shoulder. Percy averts his eyes as she taps at it, half out of courtesy and half because he’s drawn to the water. He watches the white caps swirl around below his feet until he hears a quiet curse, followed by a louder and fouler one.

“Boats are fucking up the signal,” she says, clearly annoyed. “Karking radar systems. It’s why I didn’t bother with Coral City, but I thought a shipyard would be...” She sighs loud enough to make her helmet mic crackle.

Percy bounces on his feet a bit. “Back into the fray, then?”

The Mandalorian gazes at him for a second and then her shoulders lift and drop quickly. “Sure. We can grab some food if you’re hungry.” The comms go back in her bag and she gestures for him to follow. Percy is careful to stay close behind this time.

Gone is his headache and general anxiety at the sheer number of sentients; instead, Percy feels like he can’t even shut his eyes in case he misses something. Every once in a while, the Mandalorian will pause and pull him to the side of whichever street they’re on so she can check on her comms. Even then, she’s careful to stay close: once, with her boot pressed against Percy’s, and another time with her back brushing against his arm as she hunches over to protect her screen from the rare glare of one of the Mon Cala suns.

She buys him a kebab of something, some kind of meat and starch layered after each other on a stick; he devours it so quickly that she looks at the ground around them, sure he’d just dropped it by accident. He gets a second without even asking for it, despite weak protests about how he doesn’t need another. It goes down as quickly as the first, just as delicious.

The crowds fade as it starts to get darker, the streets lit more by the faint glow of windows than the sky above. It seems to transition the world from cool to warm, even as Percy begins to be able to see his own breath. Everything’s a kind of pale yellow and orange, from the glint off the dampness of the pavement to the light casting shadows across the streets and alleys. Percy’s wonder only grows, even as the Mandalorian catches onto his growing exhaustion and decides to call it a day. On their meandering path back to the room they’ve rented, they duck into an alley to make space for a particularly wide speeder. As they wait, a bit in each other’s space, the Mandalorian’s bag chirps loudly. She digs around in it, armor brushing against his jacket as she does, and eventually fishes out her comm, now glowing a faint blue.

Her fingers are nearly a blur against the screen. “Finally,” she mumbles.

“Do most ports have shitty signals?” Percy asks, looking up at the sliver of dark sky he can see above the walls on either side of the alley.

“No, it’s fine, this is just—it’s a kind of encrypted message, is all. I need very specific parameters to get it to send.”

His curiosity wins out. “Who are you sending the message to?”

“My clan—my family. You know the mark on my pauldron?”

The bow and arrow in orange. He nods. 

“That’s our clan’s symbol. We’re known for—do you know what foundlings are?”

_No,_ he almost says. He doesn’t. Except, “they’re kids, right? Like, adopted?”

“Sure. That’s the gist of it. We have a lot of foundlings in Clan Chiron.”

The binary beep of the comm tells Percy that it’s powered down, so he finally looks away from the sky. The speeder is long gone, and the empty street makes it possible for the Mandalorian’s helmet to glow with the reflections of the storefront across the street and its pretty lights. Still, they don’t move, and Percy has an inkling. “Were you a foundling?” 

They’re close enough that the cloud of his breath reaches her helmet. “Yes,” she says. “Sort of. I was seven when I found them.”

Percy frowns. “They didn’t find you?”

“No. I found them.” The reflection of light twinkles on the side of her helmet. It’s strangely hypnotizing, but Percy resists the distraction.

“That’s good,” he says, trying to sound reassuring. “That you’re good at finding people. If you can find Mandalorians I’m sure you’ll find your husband.”

She leans her helmet back against the wall behind her. “Thank you, Percy.” Her voice is quiet.

“I want to help you,” he tells her. “I know you said that I don’t need to thank you, but…” His throat feels thick with emotion, and he clears it harshly in his rush to get the words out. “I want to help you find him. Whatever it takes.”

When the Mandalorian speaks again, after a long period of the only sound around them being the slow drip of rain, her voice is stronger. “I’d like that,” she says.

Percy thinks she sounds a little sad, but maybe a little hopeful, too.

//

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! as always, i'd love it if you would drop a comment to let me know what's working for you and your thoughts in general about these two very stupid babies who i love so much. if theres any star wars freakz out there who catch an error lmk lmfao theres only so much i know from rewatching rogue one 29485 times. im gonna post my updates on tumblr @ percivaljacksons if ur interested!
> 
> Preview for the next chapter:
> 
> Percy rolls over and into something hard; it manages to drag him from his usual heavy slumber, just enough to crack an eye part of the way open.
> 
> Gray armor. Silver helmet.
> 
> “Hey, wiseass,” he slurs out, a hand flopping towards her stomach. “Since when do you wear your helmet to bed?”
> 
> The muscles under the armor tense up. “Perce?” The voice is cautious, scared—hopeful. 
> 
> But Percy’s already asleep again.


End file.
